Recently, I was invited to contribute to Volume Seven of Insight Publishing’s Conversations on Success series. I am please to say that Steven Covey is one of my co contributors.
David Wright, President of Innovators Group Inc. and Publisher of Conversations for Success, interviewed me for my chapter in the book. The interview was quite lengthy (over 5,000 words). I have broken it up into sections and am posting it here. This is the third installment…
Wright
You also work with teams. I’ve been booking speakers for sixteen years and I’d like to say that teams have gotten better since I’ve been doing that because there are more seminars, books, and CDs on teamwork but it’s very difficult. What makes for a high performing team?
Bilanich
In my opinion, there are three things you have to concerned about if you’re trying to develop a high performing team.
The first one is what I refer to as a purpose or charter. You have to clearly define what you’re all about—why does the team exist? If you look at teams in a business environment, you’ll find variety of different kinds of teams. You have teams that work together all the time like a senior leadership team -- the leadership team of a company or of a division of a company or the sales leadership team, or the leadership team of a manufacturing or logistics operation. That’s one kind of a team.
Then there’s project teams. These teams are pulled together for a short term to accomplish a project and then they disband. There are also cross function teams. In a lot of companies, you’ll find teams composed of research and development, manufacturing, sales and marketing people. These folks often are at each other’s throats so teams are formed with representatives from each of these different functions or departments to help them all work better together.
Lately, virtual teams have become a big thing. Technology has made it possible for people who aren’t located in the same place to be able to work together as a team pretty effectively even though they don’t see each other on a day-to-day basis.
Each of the types of teams I’ve mentioned needs a purpose or charter, and each of these statements will be quite different from one another. It all starts with the answer to two questions. “Why do we exist as a team? What are the outcomes we’re hoping to accomplish?”
Wright
I’ve never heard the words “charter” and “purpose” used together before.
Bilanich
Really? I use them interchangeably when it comes to teamwork. The difference is that usually a team that is in charge of its own destiny, a leadership team for example, defines its own purpose (and again, we’re getting into semantics here). A team that has been convened or appointed by someone else, a cross function or project team for example, generally has a charter that has been given to them by the group or individual who convenes them.
For example, I was recently working with a leadership team of a manufacturing organization. This included all of the plant managers in the U.S. for this company—there were about ten or twelve people who meet regularly. They decided that they wanted to focus on enhancing employee engagement. One of the things they wanted to do was put together a small survey to see gauge the engagement level of the people who worked in their organization. They created a small team whose charter was to develop this survey.
That’s how I think of the difference between purpose and chartr. Team that control their own destiny choose their purpose. Teams that are designated by senior leaders are usually provided with a charter.
The net/net of all this is that whether you call it a purpose or charter, it’s a statement that clearly defines the team’s reason for existence. It provides members of the team an opportunity to occasionally say, “Wait a minute, is this what we should be doing? Is this in scope or out of scope for us as a team? Should we be focusing on this as a team.” That’s the main value of a purpose or a charter -- it sets the boundaries for what the team should or should not be working on.
Wright
Would you share with our readers what some of the internal factors are that lead to team success?
Bilanich
I think there are four. The first is what I refer to as infrastructure -- who’s on the team -- in some cases it’s clearly defined because it is the group of people who head up the departments of a company or unit of a company. In other cases, it’s not as clearly defined. You have to think about who you really want to invite to make sure you have the proper representation to be able to get your work done.
Second, all effective teams have a set of ground rules by which they operate. I believe these should be explicit, not implicit. When I work with teams, one of the things I help them do first is get a clear picture of how they’re going to work together and what the ground rules are. For example, there needs to be a negotiation of leadership -- what does the team expect of the leader, what does the leader expect of the team—so that it’s very clear in terms of how they’re going to work together. In some cases there’s a designated leader, in some cases leadership rotates among the members of the team. There are other issues such as how the meetings will be structured, how often the team will meet an so on. These are the nitty-gritty things you have to pay attention to if you’re going to be able work well together as a team.
Third, there’s trust, you have to have an open, honest, sharing climate that encourages participation. People need to feel free to speak their minds. Trust is a very, very important. It might be the most important internal factor when it comes to teamwork. Effective teams work at building trust.
Fourth, there’s what I call spirit. The team has to believe in itself. Team members need to feel that they are going to be successful. It’s the teamwork version of individual self-confidence. Effective teams really believe they’re going to be successful, get the job done and move forward.
Wright
Why are external relationships so important?
Bilanich
This is one of the places where I think my focus on teamwork is a little different from many other people who consult with teams. No team exists in a vacuum; it exists within an organizational structure or has been chartered for a specific purpose. All successful teams manage relationships with important constituencies outside the team.
It’s important to identify these critical people and then to say, “What are they expecting of us? What are the success metrics that the person who chartered this team has in mind for this team? Let’s make sure we align with our constituencies success metrics.”
I’ve seen a lot of teams get chartered to do a specific task, and for some reason, get sidetracked. The team feels good about themselves because of what they’ve accomplished, but the people who were expecting a certain output from the team don’t get that output. All of a sudden there is a conflict. The team feels they have worked hard, accomplished a lot and they’re not being recognized for their contribution. When, in fact, their contribution wasn’t what was expected of them from the people who put them together as a team in the first place. Over the years I’ve found that it’s really important for teams to do an excellent job of meeting the expectations of key constituencies – especially the group or individual who chartered them.
Wright
So what do you think is the most critical thing to remember about an effective team?
Bilanich
Ultimately, it comes down to a clearly stated purpose or charter. Once that purpose is clearly stated and every member of the team gets on board and is willing to do what it takes to make the team successful, most other things will fall into place. A good purpose or charter statement provides an overarching reason for the team’s existence, which in turn drives the commitment of everyone on the team and helps identify constituency expectations.
That’s it for today. Thanks for reading. Volume Seven of Conversations on Success will be available in late summer. I’ll keep you posted. Log on to my website www.BudBilanich.com for more common sense advice.
I’ll see you around the web, and at Alex’s Lemonade Stand.
Bud
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